Salzman lists top trends for 2010

By Michael C. Juliano, STAFF WRITER

Published 8:43 pm, Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Norwalk resident Marian Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR North America, predicts that the feverish growth of online social media tools and "in-your-face" honesty by today's bigwigs will be among the top trends for 2010.

"Social media has an impact on many of (the trends)," Salzman said of her 10 biggest trends forecast.

Salzman's list also includes the emergence of a mob mentality and virtual bullying over pressing political and pop culture issues in the social media sphere, and people coming up with capital-

raising tactics to start businesses instead of going to banks for money, a consequence of the troubled economy.

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"People are going to places like kiva.com for peer-to-peer lending," she said. "They are going to have to be very creative about how they find and lend money."

The world also will see children continue to be exploited as accessories for prime-time television, as with the Octomom and Jon and Kate Gosslin, and will measure time by an "Obamaclock," measuring accomplishments and setbacks against President Barack Obama's duration in office, according to Salzman.

Along with virtual mobs and bullies taking sides on controversial issues, social media sites increasingly will give rise to online communities for people to identify with, Salzman said.

Depending on who's online, today's social media frenzy can be a good thing or a bad thing, she said.

"It's good if it opens lines of communications, but it's horrendous in terms of lack of respect," said Salzman, adding that many people use social media sites unfortunately to harass other people. "There are forces of charity and bounty out there, and there are forces of true evil."

Euro RSCG Worldwide, a New York City-based international public relations firm and unit of Havas Worldwide, recently commissioned a study of 1,228 social media users in the United States on how people are interacting with each other on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The study by MicroDialogue revealed, among other findings, that 53 percent of respondents have met new people through electronic media and more users are exchanging ideas with companies in "trialogues." The study also showed that sociel media users have increased their involvement in political and humanitarian issues.

But users must be careful in what they write on these sites and how they expose themselves because both can have negative consequences, Salzman said.

"If they say something marginally annoying, people might have their employers or peer groups after them," she said. "This is the new age of the permanent fingerprint. This is not the age for the drunken rant on Facebook."

"As a general rule, if you don't want to see it on the front page of the newspaper, then don't say it," he said.

People seeking employment should make sure their pages on such sites are devoid of any negative information, said Kevin McEvoy, a marketing professor at the University of Connecticut's Stamford branch.

"Employers and organizations that use social media sites are only looking for bad news, not to see how good (job seekers) are," he said. "They're looking to see if they're crazy."